The trick to playing second fiddle is to play it like second Stradivarius. – Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Do not waste a minute, not a second, in trying to demonstrate to others the merit of your own performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it, but you can labor steadily on to something which needs no advocate but itself. – Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Letter to a Young Contributor,” The Atlantic Monthl